My brother is a math whiz, has a strong logical mind, and once said, “I use the language of logic and math to communicate what I see in the visual-spatial realm.” Of course I was intrigued and had an intuitive sense of what he was describing but it’s so far from my personal experience that [...]

Robin has a small landscape design firm with three employees. Barry, the oldest of the three has ten years experience, is very talented, and wants to buy the business from Robin, who is getting close to retirement. The other two employees are younger and in the novice phase of their careers. Robin respects Barry, seeing [...]

Mentoring comes up in my thoughts and conversation frequently these days. Of course at my age and stage of career that’s part of what happens: I have over thirty-five years of accumulated experience and knowledge and enjoy passing along what I’ve distilled. My past writing on this subject was about how hard it is to [...]

Justin worked hard to stay connected to his team. He interacted daily with each of the six members whether he needed to or not. It was just his way—make pleasant conversation to keep things friendly, ask personal questions about member’s kids or vacations, and keep up to the minute on project details. No one doubted [...]

  Alisa is a team leader at a marketing firm. Her team has six members working on a project for one of their bigger accounts. Alisa is conscious of giving praise (when it’s deserved) and holding everyone to high standards. She stays connected with team members through regular staff meetings and pushes herself to make [...]

What’s the big picture look like, Jonas? Words, Luanne—what words do we need here? What do you know about our customer, Jeff, in terms of what really matters to them? How can we line up the pieces to this to make it hang together, Will?” Are there some symbols that pop to mind, Sarah? Jon, [...]

Joshua owns and runs a small business with fifteen employees. He enjoys managing and takes pride in his ability to work with others. Delegating, in particular, is important to his philosophy of running the business. He wants others to take initiative, responsibility, and feel empowered on the job. So, he tries to be clear about [...]

Getting a phone call used to be a pretty big deal—and if it was long distance, that was a really big deal. On a long distance call in the 50s and 60s, you found out what you needed to know in a hurry and got off the phone. It was expensive. Local calling was inexpensive [...]

Barry has fifteen years experience in public accounting. He takes pride in his work and likes new challenges. Henry, Barry’s boss, likes to stay connected to his team. He asks questions about how things are going, frequently asks for updates, and is genuinely curious about others. He’ll pop by other’s offices or stop a team [...]

When communication breaks down, you must try to fix it; but when things go badly, it is very difficult to go back and risk the same breakdown. If you revisit the problem at hand, you must be prepared to do something different. Too often, the revisiting is done by restating what you already said, which [...]